To the “Gender-Affirming” People Who Lied to Me

To: The “Gender-Affirming” People Who Lied to Me

From: a Candid Realist

The most painful part of detransitioning was coming to terms with reality. A reality where I could never escape my female sex like you told me. A reality where no amount of social, medical, or legal transition could change my sex and make me male. A reality where I could never become the impossible. A reality where I could never be everything I thought I needed to be.

I now realize that I was living in a false reality where the people meant to help me with my mental illness lied to me. You lied and said transitioning would make my pain go away. You lied and said changing myself was the only treatment for my gender dysphoria. You lied and said the solution was changing my body when the problem was in my mind.

You treated my gender dysphoria as the root cause of my pain instead of a symptom of my underlying core issues. You treated me as a boy trapped in a girl’s body instead of a traumatized child dealing with the aftermath of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. You focused on the girl who wanted to be a boy and neglected to see the girl who was starving herself, self-harming, living in flashbacks, and actively suicidal. Your malpractice enabled my gender dysphoria and fueled my hatred of my body.

Being told that I could become something impossible haunts me. I thought that if I just tried hard enough I could become male. I thought that if I flattened my chest more I could make my breasts disappear. I thought that if I starved myself more I could hide my curves. I thought that if I strained my voice more I could mask my natural pitch. I thought that not passing as male was my punishment for not being disciplined enough. I thought that it was my fault that I was still sick after years of trying to change an unchangeable reality. Now it has been almost a year since I detransitioned and I am dealing with the pain of my transition, a five-and-a-half-year psychological intervention. I am dealing with the pain of healthcare providers engaging in negligent decision making and violating the hippocratic oath, the promise to first do no harm. I am dealing with the consequences of others’ failures to do what is right: to read the research with a healthy degree of skepticism and to treat patients according to moral and ethical standards. I am dealing with society’s failure to accept me for who I am, and instead choosing to fuel my mental illness by encouraging my delusions.

My pain is the byproduct of dishonesty and a lack of moral courage. The result of the absence of critical thinking, common sense, and the responsibility to question novel treatments. My pain is the byproduct of the “gender-affirming” experiment. The result of when I, a child whose sickness governed her every decision, was given the power to choose serious psychological and medical interventions with full encouragement from professionals, all in the name of “informed minor consent.” My pain is the byproduct of a stolen childhood from treatments presented as a temporary, reversible pause. The result of the inevitable lost opportunities and developmental milestones that were not deemed important enough to be considered.

I wasted years changing myself to alleviate my gender dysphoria when there was nothing to change other than how I thought about myself. I wasted years thinking I could not love women as a woman. I wasted years thinking there was something fundamentally wrong with me being female and being who I am, as if they are mutually exclusive. I wasted years thinking I was too masculine and not feminine enough to be allowed to be female, as if my innate and immutable sex was something I needed to be deserving of. I wasted years thinking that I couldn’t exist as myself in reality.

I know the “gender-affirming” dilemma is not a matter of a living son or a dead daughter, but it is a matter of finding acceptance in reality. I know accepting my sex is the treatment for my gender dysphoria. I know I wasted years living a lie.

For a process that was meant to be so affirming, not a single person prescribed me with the words I needed to hear most:

You are enough as you are, you are accepted as you are.

Genspect will be holding a free webinar for Detrans Awareness Day on Tuesday March 12th at 7pm EST. Please register here if you would like to join Laura Becker, Abel Garcia and Forest Smith to hear about the complexities involved with detransition: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IXINvva0QKeC0O4M9rCo0A